Tape assembly processes have been disclosed in my U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,000,842 and 4,188,438 as well as in my publication titled "TRENDS IN TAPE BONDING", in the April 1979 issue of SEMICONDUCTOR INTERNATIONAL. My copending patent application Ser. No. 921,642, filed July 3, 1978, is titled "CONTROLLED COLLAPSE THERMOCOMPRESSION GANG BONDING." My copending patent application Ser. No. 921,643, filed July 26, 1978, is titled "MANUFACTURE OF BUMPED COMPOSITE TAPE FOR AUTOMATIC GANG BONDING OF SEMICONDUCTIVE DEVICES." In these prior art references, a tape assembly process is detailed wherein a metal or composite metal-insulator tape is manufactured to have a plurality of metal finger patterns. The inner portion of the fingers is configured to mate with the contact pads of a semiconductor chip and are thermocompression gang bonded thereto. The chip is thus mechanically associated with the tape which can be handled automatically on reel-to-reel assembly machines. In my application, Ser. No. 921,642, the metal tape fingers are provided with bumps that permit attachment to a conventional integrated circuit (IC) chip, so that the semiconductor devices do not require bumps which impose special fabrication steps.
Typically, the tape mounted chips are run through a process in which the chips are either bonded to a lead frame and encapsulated or they are encapsulated directly with the protruding metal finger portions providing external leads. In either case, transfer molded encapsulants are preferred. While useful, this molding process has proven to be slow and the tape is commonly cut up into suitable lengths for batch encapsulation. In my copending patent application Ser. No. 133,040 filed Mar. 24, 1980 now U.S. Pat. No. 4,330,790 and titled TAPE OPERATED SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICE PACKAGING, a process is described where the tape assembly approach is applied through the encapsulation of the semiconductor devices. However, the final device is plastic encapsulated.